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Toib, a 'simple' but very capable new YouTube client

Ever since Microsoft and Google went through their 'great YouTube client but Google didn't like it so we pulled it' phase a year ago, extra emphasis has been on third party clients for the popular video sharing service. Metrotube and myTube are the two leading contenders, arguably, but we now have 'toib', a strangely named contender that largely hits the spot. The more choice the better for us users, obviously!

The developer also classes toib as 'simple', but it seems that it's just as fully featured as any other YouTube client on mobile, right down to adding comments to videos, liking them, even browsing your history of watched videos on other computers and devices. Maybe the developer meant 'simple' as in 'really easy to use' - which it definitely is!

The default theme - light - with large thumbnails meaning lots of scrolling - thankfully things look a lot better once you change themes, here (right) in settings. Note also that videos play by default in 360p, to save your data bill. If you know that you're mainly going to be on Wi-fi or uncapped LTE, then upping this 720p gives a big quality boost (where this resolution is available for content, of course).

Delving into one of my YouTube subscriptions. each of which is available in the three panes shown, each sorted according to a number of options - very comprehensive; (right) browsing my YouTube favourited videos.

OK, the font used is rather tiny (some tweaking or settings options would be helpful here), but the presentation is clear and every YouTube feature you care about is represented.

Browsing the official YouTube 'history' of videos I've watched recently on the desktop(!); (right) browsing my subscriptions and - oh - something went wrong. Still, this is effectively public version 1.0.0 - I'm sure the few remaining rough edges will be knocked off toib shortly.

Maybe it's just me, or because I use an AMOLED-screened smartphone, or because I tend to watch a lot of music-related video material, but the 'black' theme here seems rather beautiful and to work very well, while the 'light' theme looks cheap and garish. You only get the latter theme with the trial version, so I'd recommend paying the dollar (or so) to buy 'toib' outright from the start.